Starfinder's Spaceships Are Pretty!

Courtesy of figures.com at the GAMA trade show this weekend, these slides from the Paizo panel show off some gorgeous spaceship art from the Vesk (lizard people), the Shirren (insect people), and the Pactworld Alliance . Someone asked me the other day whether there would be a space hex grid battle map from Paizo, too -- the slide below answers that one with a definitive yes!

The Vesk ships kinda look like the Gamila ships from Space Battleship Yamato which is awesome. But that begs the question can we get a Wave Motion Gun on our ship to fight them?

Raises the question, it does not beg it.
"To beg a question means to assume the conclusion of an argument—a type of circular reasoning. This is an informal fallacy, in which an arguer includes the conclusion to be proven within a premise of the argument, often in an indirect way such that its presence within the premise is hidden or at least not easily apparent."

The box art isn't terrible, I'll say that. I'll believe the ships are any better than average when I can see them, and that's a rather stiffer test than it would have been even a decade ago. Kickstarter in particular has let some very nice miniatures get into production.

Recently I picked up the print on demand version of The Primal Order by Wizards of the Coast founder Peter Adkison. I have the original edition of the book, I managed to grab a copy of it back in the day, and I have the other published books for the unfortunately uncompleted game line. The idea behind The Primal Order was to build what they called a "capsystem" that would work as an overlay to other game systems, expanding them into new directions. The Primal Order line dealt with gods and clerics, an important part of many fantasy role-playing games.

One of the first rules they teach you in those pesky freshman-year composition courses is "know your audience." Before you sit down to write a text, consider who's going to be reading it and plan accordingly. When it comes to tabletop role-playing games, I've always considered the game master to be the primary audience of published adventures. Game masters are far more likely than players to read the text of an adventure, so why wouldn't a designer write with the game master in mind?

A lot has been made recently about specific games for gaming with your children. A lot of products in the last five years have focused on this with a wide variety options and feels from Hero Kids, Little Heroes and the upcoming Last Unicorn RPG from Playground Adventures. With that I thought I'd provide a review of a game I used for a long time to get kids into gaming – Steve Jackson Games's Toon.

Welcome back folks, it’s time for the PAIZO NEWS ROUNDUP, your one-stop spot for all the new and interesting material coming from your favorite ever-giving golem. In this go-round, we’ll pick up some new toys that got left out of the earlier look at Ultimate Wilderness, and also introduce a brand new Player Companion. Let’s get started!